Willie Cauley-Stein is averaging 8.7 points and 6.4 rebounds. (Chet White, UK Athletics)

Willie Cauley-Stein is the veteran leader and arguably the top player on the nation’s top-ranked team.His defense has drawn praise from all corners, with Grantland.com saying he might be the best defender in America both inside and outside.On a Kentucky squad with unprecedented talent and depth, he’s the one player who’s cracked the national player of the year conversation. Cauley-Stein, however, has a critic: himself.”I just haven’t been playing like I should be playing,” Cauley-Stein said. Cauley-Stein set that high standard for himself with his own play early in the season. With outings like his 21-point, 12-rebound, five-steal, three-block performance against Texas, Cauley-Stein showed everyone what his ceiling is, but he hasn’t reached those heights in recent weeks.He’s scored in double figures just twice in Southeastern Conference play, including back-to-back two-point games at South Carolina and Missouri. He’s continued to flummox opponents with his versatility, but his gaudy defensive numbers have taken a dip. He has only two combined blocks and steals in his last three games entering a trip for UK (22-0, 9-0 SEC) to Florida (12-10, 5-4 SEC) at 9 p.m. ET on Saturday. “It’s just like, just the same stuff I’ve always been doing, I just got away from it,” Cauley-Stein said. “As the season goes on you just start to get like wear and tear and you stop doing what got you there, so now I’m just trying to do what got me so high up and then just keep on building off of it.” For Cauley-Stein, wear and tear is coming in the form of a nagging injury that John Calipari terms a “sore ankle” that has been “scanned and double-scanned and triple-scanned” for something more serious. It’s nothing that will keep him from playing, but it doesn’t make playing to his potential any easier.”He’s a little hurt,” Calipari said. “You know, ankle’s bothering him a little bit, but there’s no reason for him not to have the numbers — you know, double-digit scoring and rebounding, even with the minutes, because he is probably one of the guys that is getting a little more minutes.”The only way Cauley-Stein can think of to try to get back to that is work.”I’ve been in the gym after every practice, before practice, trying to get back to the stuff that I was doing at the beginning of the year I got away from,” Cauley-Stein said. Beyond the production, he says there is one notable difference between the Cauley-Stein who dominates every phase of the game and the one who has been merely a good player on a great team.”It just feels fun,” Cauley-Stein said. “I feel like I’m having fun, I look like I’m having fun. If I’m not playing then I don’t look like I’m having fun. That’s the biggest part about it.” Unfortunately, there’s no simple switch for Cauley-Stein to flip to have that fun because he doesn’t realize what’s going on until after the fact. “I mean, at the time I don’t realize that I look that way, but it’s more or less like, ‘Dang, I’m not scoring,’ or ‘I should’ve got that rebound,’ so then you’re just thinking about that,” Cauley-Stein said. “Then vice versa, when you’re doing all that stuff your energy is so high ’cause you’re doing the right things, doing the right things. By the end of it you look back and you see you were flying and doing all this other stuff and then, the other way around, you’re just kinda there, out there.”But if you ask his teammates, they’ll tell you Cauley-Stein isn’t being completely fair to himself, though they believe the result will be positive.”Willie is going to play like Willie,” Tyler Ulis said. “He’s a great defensive player. Offensively, he’s doing a lot better I feel like. If he feels like that then that’s great. He’s going to put more work in. He’s not complacent. With him, he’s just a great asset to our team, blocking shots defensively, being able to guard 1-5. Having him is great.”The Wildcats will certainly be counting on Cauley-Stein on Saturday considering he’s twice played in Florida’s O’Connell Center, a venue known as among the most hostile in the SEC.”I mean they’re like everybody else, but the way their gym is set up it’s just different, like they’re on top of you,” Cauley-Stein said. “It’s loud, yelling on top of you. They’re really into it.” Cauley-Stein has not yet won in Gainesville, Fla., and he’s averaging just six points and four rebounds in those two losses. He’ll surely want to improve on those numbers come Saturday night, but his coach says Cauley-Stein shouldn’t concern himself too much with all that.”We try to talk to them, but they may feel the weight of the world on their shoulders,” Calipari said. “They really shouldn’t because they have each other. I kept telling everybody, ‘You don’t even have to play great every night. I just need five guys to play well. I don’t need nine. We need five, so you’re not forced.’ ‘Well, when I don’t play well we lose.’ That’s not the case for not one player on this team. ‘Now, you play to play great, but you’re not a machine, you’re not a computer. It doesn’t happen all the time.’ ” 

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